Keeping Colorado’s Cannabis Industry Kind
Once upon a time, in order to get your hands on some decent pot, you had to know a guy. Or your friend had a guy, who had a red card and could get you that medical stuff if you were lucky enough to live somewhere it was medically legal. There was always some sketchy black market vibe and too many seeds in some compressed brown brick weed. Or you overpaid for something someone swore was from Canada.
It was a halcyon time in which it was the open secret of hippies, metalheads, and gangster rappers, but also middle-aged dads in garages listening to too much Rush. Stoner comedies were a dime bag a dozen, and some were even funny. Despite its medical qualities, helping patients through cancer treatments and the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s, pop culture would continue to trivialize potheads, and conservative propaganda would paint it as evil as any other drug.
That all began to change when Colorado voters passed Amendment 64 in the 2012 election, with the first recreational dispensaries coming online in 2014. Suddenly it gained a stronger sense of normality, with budtenders who could explain products to you and a sales tax license on the wall, like any other store. Sure, the industry remains tightly regulated and new challenges arise constantly from prohibitionists, but getting ahold of some great pot has never been easier in Colorado.
With an abundance of kind buds for both connoisseurs and the curious, it seemed like the industry boom might last forever. As more states legalized, more dispensaries and grow operations popped up and more out-of-state companies slid in to get a piece of the money. By the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, cannabis was at an all-time high in Colorado — pun intended. According to data from the Colorado Department of Revenue, the highest grossing sales month for cannabis in the state was July of 2020, bringing in $226.37m total between medical and recreational.
“For cannabis and alcohol, the pandemic was a boom because everything got shut down,” says Matthew Huron, CEO of Good Chemistry, a cannabis company with branches in Colorado. “There were no bars, no nightclubs, no concerts, no sporting events. There was nothing for anybody to do except hang out in their backyards or go to a park, and a lot more people chose to consume marijuana.”
More outside investors saw that, Huron says, and took the uptick to mean that cannabis was going to be a pandemic proof industry. More cultivation, more dispensaries, and more infrastructure started to get built out, but as it would turn out, the demand wasn’t really there. The bubble would burst just a little.
“All of a sudden, those $600 checks stopped; then inflation started, and people’s wallets got smaller; they were unemployed,” Huron says. “Then there’s just a big oversupply.”
Dispensaries started to close; prices on products dropped, and the places that have lasted through it are resilient companies like Good Chemistry or some of the bigger chains that were already insulated and self-contained. Huron, who’s been working with medical cannabis for 25 years now, sees the industry in a comfortable plateau now. Business may not be growing exponentially, but it’s steady enough to keep the lights on. Current data shows sales averaging $110m a month for most of 2024, a significant decline from that pandemic peak but seemingly holding steady.
That tracks with some of the normalization of culture, where people have a variety of sodas, edibles, flower, and concentrates to choose from and more education available to curate their experience. Buck Dutton, Native Roots’ vice president of marketing, compares it more to a glass of wine with dinner for most consumers — more moderate consumption over full-on bakefests.
“We have a very mature, very educated and knowledgeable customer base here in Colorado,” Dutton says. “They know what they’re looking for, the kind of feeling, the method and (the market) is able to cater to a more sophisticated consumer in Colorado.”
It’s not enough, though, to just have options for tasty treats and the perfect high; many companies are still working hard to advocate for themselves and others. Companies like Terrapin Station, Good Chemistry, Wana Brands, and Native Roots, among others, sponsor events and donate to nonprofits throughout the state. Shared goals with education and policy change pull together organizations like Colorado Leads and others to work with local governments as well, for a safer and more effective industry.
That advocacy is necessary when there are still strong oppositions to cannabis. Titled Intoxicating Substances & Social Equity Businesses, SB 25-076 aims to heavily restrict potency for adults under 26, put heavier qualifications on packaging, including size limits and color-coding. A bipartisan bill from State Senators Judy Amibile and Byron Pelton, it poses a significant hazard to the industry from the costs incurred implementing it alone. The packaging requirements alone would increase up to 700% for an eighth of an ounce, and more than 56 times for an ounce, as the bill would require all smokable product to be parceled out into half-gram containers.
Another component of the bill would eliminate edibles in their current state, stating that “A natural medicine license holder is prohibited from manufacturing, distributing, or transferring natural medicine or a natural medicine product that: Is a candy product, gummy, chocolate, or other confection; Contains a concentrated form of a natural medicine or natural medicine product; Is consumed by or administered by a means other than oral ingestion; or Contains an added flavor or sweetener.”
“If you were to walk into my store right now with the way this law is written today, you could maybe buy a topical,” Huron says. “All it would do is open up new avenues for a black market to reappear. At this point, with a regulated market, the focus should be more on eliminating the black market. At the end of the day, this bill would decimate the industry.”
Dutton agrees, pointing out that the industry has been very cooperative with regulation so far, even though cannabis is monitored far more intimately than alcohol sales. As prohibitionists continue to put up overreaching, pearl-clutching measures like this one, it only serves to worsen any lasting stigma for the cannabis industry as a whole. “These things don’t make any sense, so you’ve got people that aren’t consumers of cannabis and know nothing about it that think they have all the answers introducing a bill this restrictive,” Dutton says.
Some things have improved on the regulatory side, opening up research partnerships with universities like CU Boulder and Naropa to study the psychogenic effects, health properties, and more in properly controlled environments. Scientific research and education can only improve both public health and the cannabis industry as a whole.
“They’re finally writing research papers, doing studies on cannabis, and if it ever gets federally rescheduled, they could do so much more,” Dutton says. “We empower our people to go out in the community and share this with people, spread the word that we aren’t just a bunch of stoners hanging out down the street.”
Though it seems unlikely that cannabis will ever be rescheduled and reclassified under the current administration, it can hopefully continue to grow in Colorado. If you’d like to stop SB 25-076, be sure to call your state representatives and make your voice known.
